(E)QUALITY CONTROL
(C)1991 Alan M. Schwartz
I have invested more than a decade as a lead scientist in the
invention, design, fabrication, production and testing of human-
implantable medical devices. At least 90% of all research is
discarded, perhaps peeking its pimply head through the elegant
obfuscation of a monthly report, but never physically venturing
beyond the lab's waste crock. Much of the remainder is also
rejected, because our intellectual dynamism cannot restrain
biology from doing what it damn well pleases. If the MBAs cannot
see a profit in it, the device dies. A new device is a monster
perched upon a mountain of lesser efforts. Compare this with
public education, where encouraging the best to be even better is
a civil rights violation, and testing for the quality of the
product is a felony.
I began school shortly after Sputnik whispered into the American
ear that studying Greek classics was not going to drop H-bombs on
Moscow. PS 208 was a pile of weathered sandstone and grizzled
wood filled with miscreant teachers and worn desks (with brass
inkwells!) bolted to the floors. All of us learned to read and
write by second grade, treading water in a sea of standardized
tests. You might be in third grade and shaving, but you were not
going to fourth grade unless you passed those tests. We were
filtered through IQ tests, achievement tests, NY State Regents
exams, Iowa tests, and later Regents Scholarship exams, National
Merit Scholarship Exams, SATs, and things I cannot even identify
in my official school records. The "gifted" were fingered and
given an education with "enhanced breadth and depth," resulting
in our explosive intellectual maturation, and two suicide
attempts by sixth grade. With 35-40 kids in a class, losing a
few awarded the rest of us a place to sit. The least promising
adolescent sludge had their own special classes as well, with the
object of producing a citizen who would be employable, and share
in the myths that bond an unrelated bunch of humans into a
society. When sixth grade ended, hundreds of us turned our backs
on PS 208, each and all able to make change for a dollar and read
the captions under "Playboy" photographs. A surprisingly large
proportion of us ended up with incomes pushing six figures.
The Founding Fathers sought to create a nation wherein even scum
like themselves would have an equal start in life. America has
no inheritable titles. Folding green imbues any possessor with
its untainted power. The singular guarantee omitted from the
Constitution was equal achievement. A system of government was
envisioned wherein each participant could choose to start at the
same line when the gun sounded. The race was then to the swift.
Tax-gorged politicians seeking re-election have altered the
vision of the Founding Fathers. Vague self-serving sciolisms in
the guise of social engineering and civil rights buy votes from
the uncouth masses by official fiat mandating that everybody
(except the ruling classes) end the race together. Enforced
mediocrity is our doctrine. An assured absence of quality is our
canon. National ruin is our reward.
Are you too irresponsible to provide for your own retirement?
Social Security pilfers money from the working and provides for
the sick, the indigent, the superannuated, and the illegal
immigrant. Are you too lazy to earn your own wages? Welfare
swindles money from the working and pays for your food, lodging,
clothing, children, and whatever else you desire. Are you too
shortsighted to anticipate your medical liabilities? Medicare
filches money from the working and pays your health bills, though
they may run into hundreds of thousands of dollars, well beyond
the reimbursement potential of any legitimate health insurance
plan. Do you find the lure of exogenous pharmacological ecstasy
irresistible? Money extorted from the working will pay your way
through counseling and drug treatment, a vacation replete with
room, board and recreation, as many times as you desire. Are you
too stupid to learn to read and write? Social legislation will
abrogate the trauma of evaluating your abilities, and endow you
with a diploma equal to any given a student who has legitimately
acquired those discriminatory skills.
The middle class cash cow has been starved into anemia. It has
been milked into kwashiorkor. In the manner of an endangered
species hunted to extinction, it has become hard to locate. The
bountiful largess of its exploitation is growing scanty. The Law
dictates integration in the classroom. The overall US population
is now 25% black and hispanic, and Los Angeles residents between
the ages of 5 and 16 years are more than 70% "minority." We are
so equal that we are at a loss to find recruits to make the last
remnants of the system work, even as a Potemkin village.
The Law dictates FICA tax, and Federal income tax, and State
income tax, and sales tax, and disability tax... all levied on a
population that is increasingly unemployed, unemployable, and
untaxable, its income being donated by the government from taxes.
We have constructed a fiscal skyscraper that grows ever taller by
demolishing its lower stories for raw materials. There is a cold
wind whistling through a foundation that has little connection to
the fantastic bulk towering so high overhead.
Cry "TIMBER!" and call it revolution. Nature is nothing more
than quality assurance.